Another Newbie piece of tooling

Gary

SE Kansas
I want to give myself every advantage as regards ammo reloading, and I think neck turning brass will help. I watched a Utube video where a fellow used his metal lathe to do the job. He made a small mandrel (my word, not his) to place/position the brass to turn and captured the primer pocket with his lathes tail stock. So, I made one and was pleased with the way it turned out. The pics are REALLY poor, sorry.
 

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Ian

Notorious member
I've been using the heck out of mine to drive a primer-pocket uniforming tool and inside/outside deburr tools. It's FAR better than those music-box gizmos costing half what my lathe did.
 

Gary

SE Kansas
Thanks guys. Ian, I to have deburr'd on the lathe and when I get my Collet Chuck, I'm going to trim on the Lathe as well.
 

Ian

Notorious member
I've been mulling over a trimming system for a while. The challenge for me is to make a collet that fits the tailstock instead of the headstock, so the spindle doesn't have to be started/stopped for each case. Making a depth stop of some sort, or just a clamp on the bedways to "zero" the tailstock and then read your tailstock quill graduations for trim length would probably suffice.
 

Brad

Benevolent Overlord and site owner
Staff member
Industrious guy like Ian could make one of these.
Lots of examples of similar setups. Some just use a dial indicator. If the collet has a repeatable depth stop then it would be good to go.
 

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Ian

Notorious member
With a tailstock collet a person could set a stop and slide the whole tailstock back to change cases, then slide up against the stop (which would be just short of the un-trimmed case touching the cutter), lock it, and turn the tailstock quill in to the set point for trimming, back it out to zero again, unlock the tailstock, slide it back away from the spinning chuck to change the case, repeat. A split collet with outside threads and a knurled ring riding on a taper could be made and held in a tailstock drill chuck, or maybe attached to a morse taper blank.
 

Gary

SE Kansas
I understand Ian; probably a more exacting way to produce same size turning/trimming.
 

Ian

Notorious member
Not more exacting, but less wear and tear on the lathe stopping/starting it to change cases in the collet. Faster too.
 

Pistolero

Well-Known Member
Dang! The world's fanciest case trimmer, no doubt about it.
I still use a Forster....hand cranked lathe, basically.

Bill
 

Ian

Notorious member
When pricing a good powered case trimmer vs. A mini lathe, then comparing capability (even if only considering case prep and cartridge conversion), buying the lathe is a no-brainer. I'm very glad I didn't buy a case prep center before the lathe because it would have been a waste of money. The Forster trimmer with turning attachment will still get used, but likely just left set up for one thing.